Blog Roundup

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. "Will You Help Us Find the New Intellectuals?," by ARI Staff (New Ideal):

We just launched the Atlas Prize for Independent Thought -- a competition challenging 16-22-year-olds to analyze, question, defend, or critique the ideas in Atlas Shrugged featuring a $100,000 top prize. [The entry deadline is September 1. --ed]

250 words/1 minute

2. "What's Wrong With the World?," by Jaana Woiceshyn (How to Be Profitable and Moral):

In true capitalism, protection of individual rights is the government's only role and includes solving disputes through the court system. The government does not initiate force against its citizens or other countries; it uses force only in retaliation against those who do: thieves, fraudsters, other criminals, and foreign invaders. Because the government doesn't collect taxes, it cannot "re-distribute" wealth and create welfare programs to pursue social justice. (Nor can it engage in cronyism and hand out favors to the highest bidders). People are left free to pursue their own interests, to produce and trade to the best of their abilities. The small minority who are not able to work, will depend on private charity and insurance.

1000 words/3 minutes

3. "Germ Theory Is Not a Narrative," by Amesh Adalja (Tracking Zebra):

D.A. Henderson's smallpox eradication campaign was not an act of biopower. It was an act of human reason applied to a significant and deadly human problem. That is what infectious disease medicine is -- and has always been. Germ theory is not a narrative. It is a description of reality. As an infectious disease physician, I have treated patients with illnesses whose course changed because germ theory was true: bacterial infections halted by antibiotics, opportunistic infections prevented with antimicrobials, diseases made rare by vaccines. My field has always fought for civilization by trying to master an inhospitable natural world (as it always has) -- it now faces an anti-human attack wielded by an army of postmodern nihilists who have been granted government power.

740 words/2 minutes

4. "Immigration -- Some Mostly New Thoughts," by Harry Binswanger (Value for Value):

Differences over ideas, not foods or dress, are an entirely different matter. The difference between Islamic jihadists and Americans is a matter of literal life and death, not something optional. Even there, globalization will have a big impact. The ultimate defeat of Islamism will be accomplished by young people in the Islamic countries seeing the rational values of the West. That's unless the West commits suicide -- a distinct possibility.

1400 words/5 minutes

-- CAV

Evasive Relative Picks Wrong Target

Due to major obligations affecting my schedule, I will take a beak from blogging until Friday, May 29. I will appear sporadically on X/Twitter in the meantime.

***

A recent Dear Abby column misses an essential point raised by a reader's alarming question.

The question comes from a couple who have wisely decided to keep their children away from a close relative who is also a sex offender. One of their mothers is upset about these parents "breaking up the family."

Here is Abby's answer:

The best way to move forward is to stick to your guns. This relative has shown he isn't to be trusted around children. Protecting your children is your job. Keeping the family together despite the fact that this person is a threat to them is not. You have nothing to feel guilty about.

This is all good, as far as it goes, but I would have added that the person "breaking up the family" is the sex offender, not the family members who now have to weigh how they will navigate any future family gatherings.

I can imagine that many people would dismiss this as a small matter, but it is not: Making such a judgment explicit will maintain the couple's resolve against the sickening pressure, so common in our predominately altruistic culture, to sweep that problem under the rug. Furthermore, having already gotten this point right in their own minds, it will be easier for the couple to shoot down any such suggestion in the future:

But this is faaaamilyyyyy!

[Insert name here] should have thought of this before getting involved in that filth.

The person who ruined things for that family was the person who committed that crime. Trying to pretend that the perpetrator was innocent, that life can go on as usual, or -- worst, that honoring a blood relationship is more important that the safety of one's own children -- helps no one.

-- CAV

Massie Has Self, Not Trump, to Blame

Since the conservative press these days largely cheer-leads whatever the hell Trump wants -- whenever it isn't explaining how his latest whims are actually 3-D chess -- it behooves one to consider other sources on just about any matter.

And by "other sources," I don't mean just legacy media, which is largely leftist, shallow, and prone to jump to banal conclusions. Case in point: Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, who "lost to Trump" in his primary yesterday.

Lost to Trump? Really?

I am glad to have encountered Sean Davis's analysis of that defeat, in part because it was good to see that there is at least one other person who remembers that Massie took on Trump before and lived electorally to tell about it:

Trump mercilessly trashed Massie in 2020 -- calling him a "disaster" for America and Kentucky and saying he should be thrown out of the GOP entirely -- but Massie easily swatted that away and won 81-19, so you can't say he only lost because of Trump. He went toe-to-toe with Trump on COVID in 2020 and won overwhelmingly.

Massie lost because he went from being perceived as a quirky but lovable nerd who seemed to genuinely believe everything he said, to looking like a clout-chasing influencer who cared more about getting TV time with Democrats on an issue he clearly never cared about until five minutes ago than he did about representing his voters.

I will not pretend to know enough to weigh in on this theory, but it certainly sounds plausible. More importantly, it directly rebuts the notion, ridiculous when both parties are infested with lunatics, that Trump is somehow an electoral juggernaut whose slightest displeasure can sink a political career.

See also John Sununu's 2024 editorial, "Donald Trump Is a Loser," which goes into some detail on how a Trump-led Republican party fared in past elections. While Sununu wrongly predicted a loss in 2024, I'd chalk that up to Biden's failure as President and the poor choice of Kamala Harris as a replacement -- combined with an electorate that had largely forgotten how awful Trump was, or hadn't paid enough attention in the first place to realize that the first time.

I have no predictions for the next election, but consider this: The Republicans know their polling stinks and appear to hope to gerrymander themselves out of trouble.

-- CAV

Pardoned Insurrectionist Update

Just as news breaks of President Trump stealing $1.776 billion of our money to create a slush fund for the January 6 insurrectionists, we get a reminder of the kind of person Trump deems worthy of such largess:

[Ryan] Nichols was among the more prominent Trump supporters arrested in the wake of the riot, having live-streamed the chaos while calling out threats to politicians.

"I'm telling you if Pence caved, we're gonna drag motherf-----s through the streets. You f-----g politicians are going to get f-----g drug through the streets," he said in the livestream.

This upstanding citizen hasn't changed a bit since our "law and order" President dispensed with the need for any kind of "revolving door justice system:"

Harrison County Sheriff B.J. Fletcher told a local news station in East Texas this week that Nichols had followed a man out of church to the parking lot, where he proceeded to lift his shirt and flash a gun.

...

Fletcher said a bystander stepped in and de-escalated the confrontation, but that Nichols had done "more than enough" to be charged with deadly conduct.

Nichols is the fifth insurrectionist to have reoffended since the pardons.

No word yet on whether Trump will make him the second such person to be re-pardoned.

-- CAV

Dishonest Don

At The Hill, former New York state prosecutor Scott Bolden resurrects a term from the Vietnam Era: the credibility gap.

Back then, the term came into use when Lyndon Johnson's lying about the Vietnam War caused the public to stop believing him. Bolden outlines his open-and-shut case as seen in part below, with plenty of links to help anyone who hasn't been paying attention:

... Today, a credibility gap plagues President Trump because of his whoppers about the war with Iran and much more.

Trump's credibility gap endangers our national security. His hyperbolic rants are so absurd -- and his policy flip-flops so extreme -- that our foreign allies and adversaries don't believe much of what he says and no longer take him seriously. It's as if the proverbial boy who cried wolf moved into the Oval Office.

Trump has alienated our allies with his lies, insults, temper tantrums, tariffs, aid cuts to Ukraine and other nations, and threats to withdraw from NATO and annex Canada and Greenland. Our adversaries don't fear his threats because he often fails to carry them out. This has generated the insult of TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out).[links omitted, bold added]

And later:

Trump's lies and frequent policy changes have made it hard for business executives and farmers to plan for the future. For example, Trump's tariffs have raised costs for U.S. factories, retailers and farms that import finished products, parts and raw materials, and "have done significant damage to the economy" and slowed job growth, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. [link removed, bold added]

I recommend reading the whole thing.

In addition to providing links in the original of the above, Bolden reports both a few of the whoppers and the astounding frequency of Trump's lying, for example, Trump's average of "21 erroneous claims a day" during his first term.

As is apparent in the excerpts above, the lying is just part of the problem, and mutually reinforces a pattern of bad policy and whipsaw decision-making.

It is clear that Trump deserves to be called Dishonest Don, as Bolden suggests. It's too bad that's not the only problem -- or even the main one -- he poses as President.

-- CAV

Four Possibly Useful References

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. Is that sample of a tune from some episode of your favorite show driving you crazy because you can't place it? Find out what it is by consulting tunefind.

2. Wouldn't it be great if you had fresh herbs on hand every time you cooked? Sure, but don't make me laugh.

Failing that, you can find a handy fresh to dried herb conversion table at the Reluctant Gourmet. Also included are pointers on the relative merits of the fresh or dry version of an herb and when to add fresh vs dry.

3. Have you discovered to your consternation that you -- or someone you're trying to help with car trouble -- is missing the car's owner's manual?

Lemon (the "spiritual successor" to Charm) has you covered.

4. If wants to take proper care of laundry and strangely unable to read hieroglyphics both describe you, you might find this laundry care label guide helpful.

-- CAV

Asked and Answered (RE: Dr. Bhattacharya)

That was fast!

Just a few days ago, I commented favorably on an open letter to Jay Bhattacharya, director of the NIH, penned by Derek Lowe:

Regardless of where I would eventually land in a thoughtful evaluation of a pre-Trump Jay Bhattacharya, I think Lowe would say that Bhattacharya will have committed career suicide by taking his current post, absent a fantastic answer to that question.

I did not expect to see agreement from Lowe and an answer to Lowe's question so soon, if ever, and yet we have both, in Lowe's latest post on "The Latest News in Vaccine Obstruction."

There, Lowe comments on the the federal government's prevention of the publication of several large-scale studies on the safety of the coronavirus and shingles vaccines. Here is the bit directly concerning Bhattacharya:

There is broad, sustained opposition to vaccine development and deployment in this administration, from HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on down, and there has been a series of decisions that all point in that same direction. Squashing publication of studies that help to confirm vaccine safety is absolutely on brand. The Times article mentions several instances of this, with a recent example being the cancellation by Jay Bhattacharya at CDC of a publication on the efficacy of coronavirus vaccines. (Howdy, Dr. B! Feel like taking a crack at answering the question I posed to you the other day?) Meanwhile, officials like Vinay Prasad, recently departed from the FDA and thank God, feel perfectly free to make statements about deaths from vaccines that they utterly refuse to back up with any data at all. It's a scandal - a crime - and under any sort of normal circumstances careers would be ending over it. But here we are. [formatting and links in original]

Regarding these studies, it is worth repeating what Lowe had to say:

These results are (1) expected and (2) still very good to see. And this is exactly the sort of work that should be done as newer vaccines are rolled out, because although clinical trials are extensive, nothing is as extensive as millions of patients out there in the real world. Reviewing safety on that scale is obviously good practice, and obviously money and effort well spent. But it turns out the the FDA has blocked publication of all of these studies, even though two of the coronavirus ones had already been accepted at a journal. [bold added]

Or, as I once quipped after hearing some MAHA nut's incredible assertion about vaccine deaths: Where are all the dead bodies, then?

This is a breathtaking failure at the highest level. Certainly, the government shouldn't be meddling in science at all, but at least until this administration, it had experts who meant well in charge. We cannot say the same any long.

At least I'm done wondering whether Bhattacharya is a good guy or not, so I guess there is that.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected effectiveness to read safety in a sentence.